France
igor.toronyilalic
David Nice writes: it hardly seemed possible, but a pivotal figure in the 20th century music scene has died, two months short of his 91st birthday. As composer, Boulez now seems not so much a game-changer as a constant innovator in one of many strands among the possibilities of contemporary music. He even admitted in an Edinburgh Festival interview that he and his colleagues may have underestimated the role played by the audience in absorbing his avant-gardism. But on one thing everyone agreed: his fabulous ear for sonorities informed both everything he wrote and an ever-expanding repertoire Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
By the end of the 1960s, Steve McQueen was at the top of the Hollywood heap. Star turns in The Great Escape, The Thomas Crown Affair and Bullitt had established him as the King of Cool, a self-contained anti-hero whose minimalist, watchful performances radiated a mysterious sex appeal.But, as this haunting documentary by Gabriel Clarke and John McKenna explains, the instinctively rebellious McQueen had a burning desire to throw off the shackles of the big studios. Thus he formed his own production company, Solar Productions, and, funded by a deal with Cinema Center Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Pro patria mori. Now there’s the test for Henry V - perform it on Remembrance Day. The “band of brothers” shtick relies on an idea of patriotism from an age when there was no need to define something so heartfelt, and an idea that kings and commoners were all in it together when fighting the enemy. After all, Henry orders the good English soldiers to rape French girls, smash the heads of French grandfathers, and skewer their babies on pikes, no questions asked. The bonuses of patriotism, if you like.But Royal Shakespeare Company artistic director Gregory Doran presents a handwringing, post- Read more ...
joe.muggs
There's a current running through the underground club / electronic music of the 2010s that cares not a jot for progress – but neither is it retro as such. It's been called “outsider house”, which is a pretty lame name for stuff that is often extremely accessible and welcoming, and is certainly not just house music. Rather it's a kind of neo-psychedelia, a sound that plays tricks with memory and expectation, collapsing oppositions between sophistication and naiveté, between kitsch and sincerity, and between low and high fidelity in the pursuit of beautiful discombobulation. And as the none- Read more ...
Richard Bratby
It would spoil the surprise to say what exactly emerges when – after a breathless build-up and a few glimpses of a seductive silhouette – the living doll Olympia finally makes her entrance in Act One of English Touring Opera’s new production of Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. Let’s just say that it’s startling, beautiful, strange and ever-so-slightly spooky. In a word: uncanny. In an even better word: Hoffmannesque. The audience gasped, and James Bonas’s production found its stride.The Tales of Hoffmann(*****) is the centrepiece (with Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande and Massenet’s Werther) Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Lance Armstrong's spectacular crash-and-burn makes for gripping stuff in The Program, the story of the sports legend-cum-druggie who cycled too close to the sun and went on to pay the hubris-laden price. And as a star vehicle for Ben Foster, Stephen Frears's latest film not only serves as a reminder of this director's singular way with actors (note the performances that have gone the Oscar route under his watch) but makes one wonder why his young American lead hasn't yet entered Hollywood's inner sanctum when he so clearly has the stuff.Armstrong's saga of disgrace-on-an-epic-scale isn't new Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Over the past quarter century the reputation of toff playwright Terence Rattigan has been restored, mainly by strong stagings of his classic dramas, such as Deep Blue Sea. But his first smash hit, French Without Tears, has been the unicorn of his output – often talked about, often mentioned, often remembered, but never actually seen. Now Paul Miller, the ever-enterprising artistic director of the Orange Tree, has brought this unicorn into public view, allowing audiences to enjoy a joyful sighting of a rare beast.Originally put on in 1936 in the West End, where it ran for more than 1,000 Read more ...
mark.kidel
Ousmane Sembene is one of the pioneers of African cinema. Black Girl, the film that brought him international renown, has been beautifully restored for this DVD release, so that it looks as sparkling as when it was released in 1966.The strength of this film is derived in large part from the potent creative forces that were unleashed when Senegal became independent, and was ruled by the visionary politican and poet Léopold Senghor.The simple but powerful story of a Senegalese woman who takes a job as a nanny in the South of France, in the hope of enjoying the promises of the former colonial Read more ...
Matthew Wright
For a band that makes such a vivid and irresistibly danceable sound, Caravan Palace’s ascent – ten years and three albums now – has been a stealthy one, built on the traditional virtues of word-of-mouth, and selling out gigs. On paper, combining traditional “hot” jazz, the dance music of the 1950s, with the sleek hedonism of electronic dance music seems both unlikely and unpalatable. On stage, and on record, it’s a riot.Grooving, syncopated rhythm and the slick, acoustic sound of brass and violin were what made the original music such a dance sensation. Adding the limb-twitching Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The title of French director Lucie Borleteau’s first feature conceals a range of meanings. Fidelio is both the name of the enormous maritime freight vessel on which most of the action takes places, and a clear hint at “fidelity”, a concept with which its independent heroine Alice (Ariane Labed) negotiates throughout. If its French original, Fidelio: l’odyssée d’Alice, also suggests something else, the “Odyssey” of Alice’s journey meaning a return to the starting-point of home, then our expectations are challenged.The balance between home and away, with the different codes of behaviour Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Managing the boundaries of closeness in documentary filmmaking can be a complicated issue. Does the documentarist figure only as a fly-on-the-wall observer – or become involved, caught up in the story of his or her subject? Is it possible to maintain a distinction? When, and what is going too far?All these questions, and more, were in play in Sean McAllister’s outstanding A Syrian Love Story, which has already won the Grand Jury prize at the Sheffield documentary festival and looks set to reap more such honours at other events around the world. His story of a family in discord is bruising Read more ...
David Nice
It’s a sunny afternoon at altitude – 1,082 metres, to be precise – in the precincts of France’s highest historic building, the austerely impressive early Gothic Abbey-Church of St-Robert, La Chaise-Dieu. I’m relaxed because I arrived the previous evening to hear the first of two concerts at the 49th Chaise-Dieu Music Festival, the Ensemble Correspondances‘ compact semi-reconstruction of an all-night “concert royal” entertainment at the court of the young Louis XIV – two hours as opposed to the 13 of the 1653 spectacle; and because I’ve spent the morning exploring the wonders of the Read more ...